1,316 research outputs found
The value of diversity in cognitive science
A recent article (NĂșñez et al., 2019) claims that cognitive science, while starting off as a multidisciplinary enterprise, has âfailed to transition to a mature interâdisciplinary coherent field.â Two indicators reported in support of this claim target one of the two journals of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science , depicting cognitive science as an increasingly monodisciplinary subfield which is dominated by psychology. With a focus on the society's other journal, Topics in Cognitive Science , the present commentary reveals a greater degree of interdisciplinarity and discusses the relative values of diversity and integration for the field.publishedVersio
<i>In vitro</i> Characterization of Phenylacetate Decarboxylase, a Novel Enzyme Catalyzing Toluene Biosynthesis in an Anaerobic Microbial Community
Anaerobic bacterial biosynthesis of toluene from phenylacetate was reported more than two decades ago, but the biochemistry underlying this novel metabolism has never been elucidated. Here we report results of in vitro characterization studies of a novel phenylacetate decarboxylase from an anaerobic, sewage-derived enrichment culture that quantitatively produces toluene from phenylacetate; complementary metagenomic and metaproteomic analyses are also presented. Among the noteworthy findings is that this enzyme is not the well-characterized clostridial p-hydroxyphenylacetate decarboxylase (CsdBC). However, the toluene synthase under study appears to be able to catalyze both phenylacetate and p-hydroxyphenylacetate decarboxylation. Observations suggesting that phenylacetate and p-hydroxyphenylacetate decarboxylation in complex cell-free extracts were catalyzed by the same enzyme include the following: (i) the specific activity for both substrates was comparable in cell-free extracts, (ii) the two activities displayed identical behavior during chromatographic separation of cell-free extracts, (iii) both activities were irreversibly inactivated upon exposure to O2, and (iv) both activities were similarly inhibited by an amide analog of p-hydroxyphenylacetate. Based upon these and other data, we hypothesize that the toluene synthase reaction involves a glycyl radical decarboxylase. This first-time study of the phenylacetate decarboxylase reaction constitutes an important step in understanding and ultimately harnessing it for making bio-based toluene
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Selective Earth-Abundant System for CO2 Reduction: Comparing Photo- and Electrocatalytic Processes
The valorization of CO2 via photo- or electrocatalytic reduction constitutes a promising approach toward the sustainable production of fuels or value-added chemicals using intermittent renewable energy sources. For this purpose, molecular catalysts are generally studied independently with respect to the photo- or the electrochemical application, although a unifying approach would be much more effective with respect to the mechanistic understanding and the catalyst optimization. In this context, we present a combined photo- and electrocatalytic study of three Mn diimine catalysts, which demonstrates the synergistic interplay between the two methods. The photochemical part of our study involves the development of a catalytic system containing a heteroleptic Cu photosensitizer and the sacrificial BIH reagent. The system shows exclusive selectivity for CO generation and renders turnover numbers which are among the highest reported thus far within the group of fully earth-abundant photocatalytic systems. The electrochemical part of our investigations complements the mechanistic understanding of the photochemical process and demonstrates that in the present case the sacrificial reagent, the photosensitizer, and the irradiation source can be replaced by the electrode and a weak BrÞnsted acid. © 2019 American Chemical Society
RevManHAL: towards automatic text generation in systematic reviews
Background: Systematic reviews are a key part of healthcare evaluation. They involve important painstaking but repetitive work. A major producer of systematic reviews, the Cochrane Collaboration, employs Review Manager (RevMan) programmeâa software which assists reviewers and produces XML-structured files. This paper describes an add-on programme (RevManHAL) which helps auto-generate the abstract, results and discussion sections of RevMan-generated reviews in multiple languages. The paper also describes future developments for RevManHAL.
Methods: RevManHAL was created in Java using NetBeans by a programmer working full time for 2 months.
Results: The resulting open-source programme uses editable phrase banks to envelop text/numbers from within the prepared RevMan file in formatted readable text of a chosen language. In this way, considerable parts of the reviewâs âabstractâ, âresultsâ and âdiscussionâ sections are created and a phrase added to âacknowledgementsâ.
Conclusion: RevManHALâs output needs to be checked by reviewers, but already, from our experience within the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group (200 maintained reviews, 900 reviewers), RevManHAL has saved much time which is better employed thinking about the meaning of the data rather than restating them. Many more functions will become possible as review writing becomes increasingly automated
A model balancing cooperation and competition explains our right-handed world and the dominance of left-handed athletes
An overwhelming majority of humans are right-handed. Numerous explanations
for individual handedness have been proposed, but this population-level
handedness remains puzzling. Here we use a minimal mathematical model to
explain this population-level hand preference as an evolved balance between
cooperative and competitive pressures in human evolutionary history. We use
selection of elite athletes as a test-bed for our evolutionary model and
account for the surprising distribution of handedness in many professional
sports. Our model predicts strong lateralization in social species with limited
combative interaction, and elucidates the rarity of compelling evidence for
"pawedness" in the animal world.Comment: 5 pages of text and 3 figures in manuscript, 8 pages of text and two
figures in supplementary materia
Isotope shift in the dielectronic recombination of three-electron ^{A}Nd^{57+}
Isotope shifts in dielectronic recombination spectra were studied for Li-like
^{A}Nd^{57+} ions with A=142 and A=150. From the displacement of resonance
positions energy shifts \delta E^{142,150}(2s-2p_1/2)= 40.2(3)(6) meV
(stat)(sys)) and \delta E^{142,150}(2s-2p_3/2) = 42.3(12)(20) meV of 2s-2p_j
transitions were deduced. An evaluation of these values within a full QED
treatment yields a change in the mean-square charge radius of ^{142,150}\delta
= -1.36(1)(3) fm^2. The approach is conceptually new and combines the
advantage of a simple atomic structure with high sensitivity to nuclear size.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
Letter
Genetic Manipulation of the Obligate Chemolithoautotrophic Bacterium Thiobacillus denitrificans
The maximum modulus of a trigonometric trinomial
Let Lambda be a set of three integers and let C_Lambda be the space of
2pi-periodic functions with spectrum in Lambda endowed with the maximum modulus
norm. We isolate the maximum modulus points x of trigonometric trinomials T in
C_Lambda and prove that x is unique unless |T| has an axis of symmetry. This
permits to compute the exposed and the extreme points of the unit ball of
C_Lambda, to describe how the maximum modulus of T varies with respect to the
arguments of its Fourier coefficients and to compute the norm of unimodular
relative Fourier multipliers on C_Lambda. We obtain in particular the Sidon
constant of Lambda
Information and noise in quantum measurement
Even though measurement results obtained in the real world are generally both
noisy and continuous, quantum measurement theory tends to emphasize the ideal
limit of perfect precision and quantized measurement results. In this article,
a more general concept of noisy measurements is applied to investigate the role
of quantum noise in the measurement process. In particular, it is shown that
the effects of quantum noise can be separated from the effects of information
obtained in the measurement. However, quantum noise is required to ``cover up''
negative probabilities arising as the quantum limit is approached. These
negative probabilities represent fundamental quantum mechanical correlations
between the measured variable and the variables affected by quantum noise.Comment: 16 pages, short comment added in II.B., final version for publication
in Phys. Rev.
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